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Yahoo has just initiated a gradual change in its online services, requiring an actual Yahoo account instead of Facebook or Google credentials. This move might indicate a bigger strategy on Yahoo's part to reclaim its lost territory on the Internet.

In a rather abrupt move, Yahoo COO Henrique de Castro has left the company. Effective Thursday, de Castro will no longer hold any position at Yahoo, and has vacated his position as COO altogehter. This brings a strange wrinkle to an already odd story, and could mean a schism was growing within Yahoo’s ranks.

When it comes to acquisitions, Google has made headlines lately. Prior to their announced acquisition of Nest, they purchased robotics from Boston Dynamics -- and let's not forget about Waze. If it seems like an exorbitant amount of spending, it is. When considering their rivals, Google spent more than their five leading competitors combined.

There is almost an embarrassment of riches in Android when it comes to homescreen launchers, but these days, launchers seem to be gravitating towards smart customization. Seeing this trend, Yahoo is announcing at CES 2014 that it has acquired Aviate, a relatively new smart launcher that is still in beta.

Earlier, the Internet went aflutter after a video leaked out that showed what seems to be Yahoo's entry into the voice-controlled personal assistant arena. Although many noted that the video seemed fake, the software is, in fact, real but its connection with Yahoo might not be as strong.

This year has one underlying thread: context. The most glaring example of context is with our mobile devices. Siri and Google Now are nothing new, but Motorola’s take on contextual awareness and information continues to amaze. Google Now saw some sublime updates as well, but some just don’t want the Google ecosystem knowing their every move.

News of another Yahoo acquisition has surfaced this morning. This latest is a company called SkyPhrase and at this time, we are seeing confirmation coming by way of Yahoo and SkyPhrase. For those not familiar with the name, SkyPhrase is a company that has built natural language processing technology. And in the words of Yahoo, the technology is "amazing."

Finishing ahead of its self-imposed year-end deadline, Google's security engineer Dan Dulay announced that the tech giant has successfully upgraded all its SSL certificates to the longer 2048-bit RSA. In the meantime, Yahoo is also stepping up its security game and plans to encrypt both internal and user data starting in the first quarter of 2014.

If recent revelations about the US governments spying activities still has sent shivers down your spine, this latest bit just might do it. At least it did for some Google employees. It seems highly probable that the NSA has been utilizing its broad overseas reach to tap into Google's and Yahoo's lines to intercept data being exchanged not only between Americans but with other nations' citizens as well.

The entire Android community and Android Open Source Project (AOSP) has suffered a great loss this month, as the lead technical engineer known as Jean-Baptiste Queru left the team last month and has now been hired by Yahoo. We all know him as JBQ, who's done fine work managing Android's source code, but now he's no longer with Google.